Mercedes Team Buys Teen £35K Artificial Hand

It has been more than a year now since we talked about the awesome high-tech and very expensive artificial limbs made by a company called Touch Bionics. These hands are able to sense the electrical pulses from the muscles in the arm of users and activate artificial bionic hand. The artificial hand is so high-tech that the user can do just about anything they are able to do with a normal hand.

A 14-year-old boy named Matthew James was born with a congenital defect that meant his left arm only developed to the wrist. The teen sent a letter to Ross Brawn, the head of the Mercedes F1 team and offered to allow the team to advertise on his bionic hand if they would pay the £35,000 that the hand costs.

The teen's letter was "intelligent and moving" according to Mercedes so they contracted with Touch Bionics to get the boy a custom i-LIMB Pulse artificial hand. The teen says that he can do just about anything with the new hand and that his old hand only had a simple close and release mechanism. The hand is even Bluetooth enabled to allow the teen to connect the limb to his computer to control the strength and speed of the hand. Each of the fingers on the hand is powered by its own motor.

[via Telegraph]